Meeting Donnie
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0:00A: So I just live all the way across the park. Yeah, watch the camera. You want to do it, bro? Hey, buddy.
0:12B: Yo, what’s up? There you go.
0:14A: Hey, my, uh, my name is Donnie. Uh, I’m -- I want to say I’m a photographer.
0:21B: Let’s walk and talk. Let’s walk and talk.
0:23A: And I respect everybody who does videography. You know what I mean? I’m smoking a joint with my homie right now, you know. Ow!
0:31B: Taken out.
0:33A: Ouch. But yeah, like, I, I respect everybody, you know what I mean? Like, just keep doing you, keep living life, enjoy your peeps. Like, tonight I lost my auntie, you know. I just barely met my folks tonight. Like, they seem like pretty amazing folks. Um, yeah, just keep doing you. Free Palestine. Keep living your life, bro.
0:58B: Cheers. So what do you think about the protest scene here in Denver?
1:09A: Uh, well, right now with the ICE and all that shit, it’s just people are worried. You know?
1:18B: Yeah.
1:19A: People were very worried. And like, I have family and friends who work daily, you know, and they’re from basically everywhere from the Latin world, you know, from El Salvador to Mexico, different parts of Mexico, Honduras, you know, throughout the Latin world, you know, Peru. Argentina, and I have a big following at Facebook. My name is Donnie Torres. Um, yeah, I have, I want to say, 34.1 followers on Facebook.
1:58B: Hmm.
1:58A: But, um, my Instagram, I’m working up there, you know. I’m at 1.4. Finally crossed that path right now. But, um, Without the followers, you know, I would not be me. You know what I mean? Like, I love my followers. I keep pushing what I have to do because I love my folks. You know, because they have family who definitely works every day, and, you know, they’re scared, you know, going to work every day because of Trump right now.
2:30B: What do you think about Trump? We’re about to go to war, huh? We’re at war.
2:33A: Man. Like I said, it’s always resources, you know? Like I’m Native American. Like I know they raped our family hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years throughout Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and throughout the, you know, 7 Councils of Lakota. But like I said, it’s just --
2:52B: What’s Pine Ridge?
2:53A: It’s a reservation 6 hours here from Denver. My reservation is It’s, someone says, 6 and 40 minutes from Denver. It’s called Rosebud Reservation. Like I said, like, we respect everybody, you know what I mean? My cousin out of Minnesota, he started Native Lives Matter when my cousin Paul Castaway died. Yeah, but with the said, I lost my cousin. Paul passed away on July 15th of 2015, or July 12th, 2015. So when you say fuck 12, that’s personal to me. Like, that’s the day my cousin died. So fuck 12 means a lot to me right now. If you don’t know, um, before I got this, I have an anarchy Tap. Way before the fucking Sons of Anarchy. My cousin approved that shit before he passed away.
4:00B: Word.
4:01A: Oh, my bad.
4:02B: No, you’re all good.
4:03A: Yeah. Got that in 4K.
4:09B: You got that win.
4:10A: Yeah. I want to say when I went to jail my first time, uh-huh, uh, it was December or October of 2004. And Sons of Anarchy came out like -- Sons SOA came out like 4 or 5 years later. I caught so much shit because of this tattoo. But being indigenous, there’s always a resistance, you know what I mean? It’s like, I understand with your folks too. You have background folk, and I truly respect that. And, um --
4:44B: Breaking out the real words. He said indigenous. Stop playing with it.
4:48A: Exactly, folks. Like, we’re all connected, bro. It doesn’t matter what you bleed, bro. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, red, yellow, purple.
4:59B: It doesn’t really matter.
5:01A: We all breathe the same color and we bleed the same color, bro. We breathe the same air, you know what I mean? Breathe the same air and we bleed the same color, you know? But it’s just times now that we’re living in, there’s It’s just so chaotic and people don’t think, you know, we’re all equal. Kind of fucked up, but I think we’re gonna do it.
5:25B: Time is now, huh?
5:27A: Exactly, bud.
5:29B: It’s on me, huh?
